Chariot Wins First Round of San Francisco's Private Transit Battle - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottbeyer/2015/09/08/chariot-wins-first-round-of-san-franciscos-private-transit-battle/ <comment><USER2> As well they should win. If the city bothered to provide proper services, then these alternatives would not be profitable.

But godforbid someone might challenge their monopoly. San Francisco, learn how to compete, don't be chicken and outlaw the competition, despite relying on my and every other citizens taxes... Shame muni.

<comment><USER3> I've heard this opinion repeated often on HN, but personally I never had any problems getting around SF using the Muni bus system when I was there. It isn't even very expensive compared to fare prices here in Europe. What's the problem with it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's interesting that Chariot can sell a bus ride for barely more than the (heavily subsidised) MUNI costs.

In my limited experience though, it seems that when I ride the MUNI I'm the only person actually paying a fare. Everybody else either has some kind of pass or is fare evading.

<comment><USER5> When it was started it also was not wheelchair accessible. Not sure if this is still the case. Cherry picking profitable routes is not the same as providing access to all residents of the city.

<comment><USER4> So how much of the city's residents' taxes turn out to be just subsidising the tiny minority who need wheelchairs?

<comment><USER6> Does it matter? That's why public transit and government exists, to offer services to every single person.

<comment><USER4> That's one view of the role of government, I'm not so sure it's the right one. I at least think it should be up for debate.

<comment><USER7> The thing about common carriers is that they're _designed_ to be the carriers of last resort. They have special dispensation from a governing body to operate and -in return- they are _obliged_ to offer their services to _all_ who can afford them.

Common carriers are a long-standing practice that has _clear_ benefits for society as a whole. What's more, back in the 1960s and 1970s we -as a nation- realized that there is value in helping the weak, infirm, disadvantaged, and those subject to discrimination participate as fully as they are able to in the public sphere.

If you want a somewhat less _academic_ reason, remember that _you_ can be afflicted by illness, infirmity, handicap, or -albeit on a longer timescale- discrimination at _any_ time. When you're down, it's _good_ to have services available that help prevent you from hitting rock bottom and allow you to help yourself get back on your feet quicker than you would on your own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Folks might want to see Nancy Pelosi's daughter's documentary _San Francisco 2.0_ on the impact of inequality on the city, which happened to be plugged on the most recent _Real Time_.

[http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/san- francisco-2-0/index.htm...](http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/san- francisco-2-0/index.html)

<comment><USER9> Inequality increases crime. Heaps of references like this

[http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-01-06/want-to- fig...](http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-01-06/want-to-fight-crime- address-economic-inequality)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How does Chariot compared with [Via]([http://ridewithvia.com/](http://ridewithvia.com/)) in NYC?

</comment><comment><USER11> Like sharoots in Israel

<comment><USER12> Or the dolmus in Turkey. Or the equivalent service in many countries.

It always irritated me that American countries don't use the more practical neighborhood-to-neighborhood model to provide more convenient service outside the main lines.

This could also be used to transport people in a hub-and-spoke model throughout the valley, like they do in Istanbul. A combination of Caltrain, BART, and quick-moving busses and vans could more efficiently move people.

The van drivers just couldn't make as much as a bus driver, or the subsidy would have to be bigger. (12 people * 2 dollars = 24 dollars for an hour one- way in rush hour, which is hard to make profitable.)</comment></comment>


Page not found - <AUTHOR> http://devblog.avdi.org/2016/03/02/should-we-use-a-coding-standard/ <comment><USER2> I suggest retitling this in accordance with the article title: "Should we use a coding standard?"</comment>


Verizon Acquires Terremark and its Enterprise Cloud for $1.4 Billion - <AUTHOR> http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/01/27/verizon-to-acquire-terremark-for-1-4-billion/

<comment><USER2> Kind of makes Salesforce's Heroku deal look like peanuts.</comment>


The cost of a system call [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~chensm/Big_Data_reading_group/papers/flexsc-osdi10.pdf <comment><USER2> The FlexSC paper from 2010.

They observe the cache damage from traditional system calls and propose batch queueing them and ideally using a different core to service them. This is not the traditional Unix programming model, so they create a threading package the transparently makes your traditional Unix synchronous system calls work. They benchmark Apache with all of this new apparatus and it performs very well.

<comment><USER3> Video of the paper presentation... [https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi10/flexsc-flexible- sys...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi10/flexsc-flexible-system-call- scheduling-exception-less-system-calls)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A callback-oriented kernel call mechanism. Hmm. The callback-oriented framework people should love this. It looks like you have to keep polling the shared page to see when your system call is done, though.

It's painful to realize that, after a context switch, modern CPUs can need 11,000 cycles to get back to full speed, with the right stuff in the caches and pipelines. Maybe we need CPUs which handle context switches better.

<comment><USER5> A lot of that is dumping cache and then trying to refill it after the context switch. Regarding context switches, one of the things that they suggested is to pin one core to stay in the system context and just handle servicing syscalls, etc. Given a modern server can have up to a few hundred logical cores, that's not as big of a thing to ask for as it was even a few years ago. Even "cheap" servers these days have 8-16, so pinning there might even make sense as well.

<comment><USER6> That's what I did in some of my designs. It was more about covert channel mitigation by ensuring the secrets and untrusted stuff used seperate CPU's. Side benefit was performance benefit of less cache flushes. It works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I found this paper _incredibly_ interesting, and I think I'd love to work in research in this area. Does anyone have some resources to learn more/keywords to search? I'm currently a biomedical engineering undergraduate, so the most relevant course I've had has been Digital Logic, which I absolutely loved and did very well in, but I'd really appreciate advice on additional courses to try to take.

<comment><USER8> On the most basic level, you should be able to write a simple operating system from scratch. I heard [http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/) is good for an introduction to OS writing.

Some papers I read in no particular order:

Synthesis OS ([http://valerieaurora.org/synthesis/SynthesisOS/](http://valerieaurora.org/synthesis/SynthesisOS/)) might be interesting for you. They do lots of runtime code synthesis.

Exokernels (follow links from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exokernel#Bibliography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exokernel#Bibliography)). And more recently Mirage ([https://mirage.io/](https://mirage.io/)) and HaLVm ([https://github.com/GaloisInc/HaLVM](https://github.com/GaloisInc/HaLVM))

(I assume you already know how to program. Otherwise, brush up on that as step 0. C is still the canonical choice for OS work. But if you are feeling adventurous there's more choice.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The interesting bit I was eagerly anticipating is buried way down in "3.1 Exception-Less Syscall Interface." How'd they do it? Syscall pages. This sounds really interesting, though apparently not terribly new.

I'd be really concerned about trust issues, but I'm sure it could be done safely. Lots of room for corner cases, especially w/NUMA.

</comment><comment><USER10> We should just let V8 run in the kernel and do away with system calls. [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and- death...](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of- javascript)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is cool but it certainly makes things more complicated. It adds a kernel mode thread per process.

<comment><USER11> I think you can do it with just one kernel mode thread for all processes, using one (or more) pages of memory per process/thread. The kernel process can read all the pages, but pages can only be read by their respective processes.

It looks like this is not what the article's implementation does, but I think it would be possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is fantastic. Any plans of getting this into main stream Linux kernel?

<comment><USER13> www.google.com/patents/US20140149781

<comment><USER14> RedHat has the patent... thats good, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The seems like the kind of thing you'd expect to see implemented in Redox.[0]

[0] [http://www.redox-os.org/](http://www.redox-os.org/)

<comment><USER16> How so? This talks about changing how syscalls work (batching, callbacks, pinning the syscall handler to one core) but it doesn't look like redox does anything special with syscalls ([https://doc.redox- os.org/doc/kernel/syscall/index.html](https://doc.redox- os.org/doc/kernel/syscall/index.html))

> The system call interface is very similar to POSIX's system calls

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> iirc xok exokernel had the same thing by doing 'scheduler activations' through a vdso. How does flexsc handle cancellation points? What about latency?

</comment><comment><USER18> TempleOS is ring-0-only. No system call overhead.</comment>


Ubuntu tapped by China for national operating system - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/22/china_makes_linux_os_with_canonical_help/ <comment><USER3> Leaving aside the normal concerns about collaboration with an authoritarian government, this looks like a really big deal: _Ubuntu is now the "reference architecture for standard operating systems" in China._ [1]

If I understand correctly, this means a flavor of Ubuntu (and Unity, according to the press release) will be used by hundreds of millions of people within the next decade, far surpassing the worldwide market share of Mac OS X, Chrome OS, etc.

In all likelihood, Microsoft now views Ubuntu with Unity as a main competitor on the desktop.

\--

[1] [http://www.canonical.com/content/canonical-and-chinese- stand...](http://www.canonical.com/content/canonical-and-chinese-standards- body-announce-ubuntu-collaboration)

\--

Edits: changed "few years" to "decade," in response to hydrology's comment (thanks hydrology!); and added a reference to Chrome OS and Microsoft.

<comment><USER4> Apple is incredibly popular among Chinese international university students, but the first thing everyone does when they get a new Macbook is to install bootcamp and never boot into OSX again.

If even the brightest and more malleable of the people don't want to use anything except Windows, I don't see the average person switching to Ubuntu at all.

<comment><USER5> It has nothing to do with the Chinese international students being bright (which they generally are) or malleable (which they're not - they're just studying machines). It has to do with the fact that there are a ton of Chinese websites that only work in IE.

<comment><USER4> That is a good point, although I think it's more of Windows-only programs like PPS, a TV and movie streaming app that fills the Netflix void, except it's free so everyone and their mother uses it

<comment><USER6> Desktop programs are an issue, but they can be ported.

The biggest problem is all the websites that serve ActiveX plugins. Web apps are supposed to be platform-independent, that's one of their biggest advantages, but Microsoft sabotaged that with ActiveX. Microsoft did a tremendous amount of harm to internet users by producing so much platform- dependent web software.

<comment><USER7> Did you really just say that it's easier to write a large number of windows- only programs than it is to either:

       a) fix the websites that have ActiveX dependencies
       b) modify a single web-browser to support ActiveX like IE6 used to

If true, ... wow.

<comment><USER6> What I meant was that the large number of currently Windows-only Chinese desktop applications will not be the biggest obstacle to Chinese users adobting Ubuntu, because they can be ported, and Canonical is working with the Chinese government to port the most popular ones ahead of time.

The number of Chinese websites out there with ActiveX dependencies is probably much greater, and you can't really "port" a website. Good luck getting all those Chinese web developers to fix their sites.

If Canonical bundled a web browser that supported ActiveX, that would temporarily resolve the problem (while enabling it to perpetuate), but I'm not sure if Microsoft's licenses even allow a non-IE browser to re-implement ActiveX.

So, I think that not being able to browse many Chinese websites on other platforms is the main thing that keeps Chinese users locked into IE/Windows right now.

Perhaps, though, my knowledge is outdated and ActiveX plugins aren't as ubiquitous in China as they used to be.

<comment><USER5> I'm sure the Chinese government could force the most popular sites to replace ActiveX, but it'll be hard to get to the long tail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seriously? NUDT (National University of Defense Technology) still names it Kylin? How shameless… A little bit of the old story for those who don't know:

Around 2001~2002, NUDT, Lenovo Group, and a few other organizations took a government grant of 70 million RMB and claimed to independently created a new operating system with their own copyright/IP for defense use called Galaxy Kylin.

In 2006, an analysis [1] of the "new" OS revealed that Kylin was most likely a fork of FreeBSD, which voided the previous independent creation and copyright/IP claims. Worse, they did not follow FreeBSD license when distributing the software.

When the scandal was published and went crazy in the media the same year, another interesting incident happened: access to www.freebsd.org was blocked from mainland China. In fact, the term "FreeBSD" became a sensitive keyword that if you mention it anywhere on any page, your connection will be cut-off and subsequently blocked, not just www.freebsd.org [2]. Of course there was no official statement regarding the connection between the two (what do you expect anyway…), given the deep involvement of NUDT and the Great Firewall, one has to wonder…

Looks like they learned something from that scandal and this time they acknowledged the adoption of Ubuntu/Linux upfront. Let's see what will happen next.

[1]: [http://www.dancefire.org/article/Kernel_Similarity_Analysis....](http://www.dancefire.org/article/Kernel_Similarity_Analysis.html) (in Simplified Chinese)

[2]: <http://www.williamlong.info/archives/406.html> (in Simplified Chinese)

</comment><comment><USER9> What happened to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux> ?

<comment><USER10> new with desktop 6.0 SP3 (the latest version): KDE 3.6

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Because the software is open source it's unlikely that any backdoors could be added into the Ubuntu OS without the global Linux community taking notice."

Depending on the level of involvement China actually has, I don't think they would have any qualms with distributing binaries with backdoors, but keeping their changes secret.

<comment><USER12> But as a mechanism of state control that can be very flimsy, it is much easier, however probably not cheaper, to control the choke point; the network. If all it took to avoid state control was a re-install of a non-approved version of kylin/ubuntu then everyone would do it.

<comment><USER13> The mechanisms of state control remain unchanged - and none of them are online. The big fears of the (non-activist) population are that someone will physically take them or their children to a dark hole, and that someone they know will inform on them so that happens.

IP networks are not involved.

East Germany is probably the most obvious example in recent times - and the fear mostly came from knowing someone could inform on you. If you thought a person was going to inform on you, one would avoid them naturally.

So, if you think a computer will inform on you, you would naturally avoid it.

It seems to me that the chinese state is in a bind similar to that faced by Deng xiaoping - this thing the West does (Capitalism or Internet) is enabling them to charge so economically ahead it is an existential threat _not_ to follow. But if we do follow _the party_ risks losing control.

Deng did take the risk and the loss of control seemed to be offset - <USER2> this time the rifts in the party are deeper, the gulf between rich and poor wider.

I would not like to be making those choices.

<comment><USER14> I think you're over-estimating the amount of control the party has or tries to enforce in China. Inside Chinese border, the amount of people who fear the party is probably in line with those who trust it -- not many.

<comment><USER13> I will happily defer to those with real knowledge of China, however the basic issue seems true - the vast, "make mockery of all that has gone before" economic growth has been exclusively driven from democratic/free nations.

If you want some of that growth, it seems logical you need to allow freedom. How much? How soon? How to stop it descending into anarchy? With a billion + lives on the line ... well I have a lot of sympathy for Presidents who go to China and then don't jump up and down screaming "become a democracy NOW"

edit: I would be interested in knowing why the down votes. I tend to delete when I reach minus figures but I am interested with what opposing view to the above others have (if it was just random expressions of dislike I will live with it.)

<comment><USER15> _> If you want some of that growth, it seems logical you need to allow freedom._

Singapore.

<comment><USER13> I think Singapore is not the best example of a totalitarian dictatorship. Its an elected democracy, low coorruption, high standards of living. But yes it is "partly free" according to EIU its ranked with Hong Kong and Banglesh and a long way above Russia.

So I would still say yes, freedom does bring economic benefits. One assumes the more freedom the more benefits.

We ought to remember that at the polling stations

<comment><USER15> _> We ought to remember that at the polling stations_

The polling stations only represent a small part of the problem.

You know what I wish we had? A movement of common-sense _intellectually honest_ discussion groups. Groups that are focused on media distortions and facts. Groups that are predicated on the idea that the media and politics is self-interested in promulgating drama and debate beyond what really makes sense. I would like to be part of a group that likes to look behind those curtains.

I think if one looks hard enough at an acrimonious debate, you eventually get to some kind of _hard question_. Despite what the media often portrays, we're often all just people trying to get to the bottom of some hard question, and we should expect people to come to different conclusions.

<comment><USER13> What you are describing is called Journalism

What we have in almost all newspapers and tv outlets is not Journalism and when it occassionally is it is not comprehensive, sustained or penetrative

I suspect that in the uk as we may or may not get so e press regulation, we shall find blogging as the protected speech and slowly find local issues becoming driven from local blogs.

It's going to be fun to watch

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a great idea. Now one and a half billion Chinese can get their free OS'es completely legally instead of using pirated, possibly malware-tainted copies of Windows XP. And Microsoft can stop crying about the hypothetical lost revenue due to piracy when everyone switches to a better, free product.

Not that they couldn't switch before, but perhaps the official government endorsement of Ubuntu will jump-start the adoption rate in China.

<comment><USER16> This assumes that the new OS will be better than WinXP/Win7/Win8. (Well, let's just not talk about Win8.) If "better" means more compatible with existing apps, more stable, easier to use, more standard... not sure you can make an argument for that. Maybe in a few years when the desktop is just a portal for web apps.

Plus... China's currently only 1.34 billion. They've got a ways to go to get to 1.5B.

<comment><USER15> _> If "better" means more compatible with existing apps, more stable, easier to use, more standard... not sure you can make an argument for that. Maybe in a few years when the desktop is just a portal for web apps._

WINE has made some big strides. If the Chinese government properly got behind it, a properly outfitted Ubuntu with really well integrated WINE might be a defacto Windows replacement in China.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The Indian govt. introduced BOSS Linux [1] many years ago as the "official" Linux distro, based on Debian. Alas, no one has even heard of it, let alone use it.

[1]: <http://bosslinux.in/>

</comment><comment><USER18> I thought Linux avoids malware by both unpopularity and security features? If it suddenly has a global market share of 20%, what then?

<comment><USER19> I asume the majority of people currently using Ubuntu are smart enough to avoid malware.

<comment><USER18> I'm not, and I use Ubuntu. I'd love a good tutorial to start learning about it.

<comment><USER20> You really don't need to boycott Firefox like the other commenter suggested. Just disable java and set plugins to click_to_play in about:config.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I take offense with the following part of the article:

"Other repressive nations that have developed local versions of Linux include North Korea, which built the KDE-based Red Star OS to help wean it as a nation off of an unfortunate dependence on Windows made by the capitalists over at Microsoft."

China is a "repressive nation"? Says who? Britain, the leader in colonialist aggressions, mass slavery and blatant interventions to third nations?

<comment><USER22> Absolutely.

* Tiananmen square. Murders against any form of civil disobedience.

* Secret and non-secret alliances with North Korea.

* Occasional acts of aggression on Japan.

* Great firewall, general suppression of information from citizens.

* Massive amounts of political corruption.

* Human rights violations aplenty.

* Causing an environmental catastrophe. Fucking up the entire planet in the process.

* Tibet, Taiwan, etc etc

<comment><USER23> Unfortunately, I think most Chinese living there have bought the government's argument that if any of the stuff you mentioned above would not exist, it would "disrupt" the "unity" of their society. So everyone must stay in line for the "greater good", even if violent action is necessary against some individuals.

What's the scariest thing in such situations is not one tyrant or another. If only that was the case, it wouldn't be too hard to replace him. The scariest part is when a _culture_ forms around that tyrant's ideals. Because _that_ will be very hard to "kill" or replace. It can take generations, depending on how deep that culture goes.

Look even at US. Let's say the TSA was a complete and total mistake, and history will prove that to be right. But how long will it take to kill the TSA? It's already been a decade, and I can easily see it last another decade. So is it just Bush or Obama at fault for keeping TSA? No. It's country's culture right now that TSA and plenty of other "counter-terrorist" measures (including the stamping of the 4th amendment) are "needed".

When you look at it from that point of view, you begin to understand why most Chinese may not necessarily see what their government is doing as a bad thing, because they themselves think their measures are good and necessary.

<comment><USER22> That's an interesting point, but it's really difficult when you talk to a Chinese person and they flatly deny tiananmen square, or that their government is suppressing their own freedom.

When you go to prove it on the internet, it still seems like they just do not want to believe. I find that very difficult to deal with.

I'm not going to win friends here, but it's much like talking with an Israeli.

<comment><USER21> > _I'm not going to win friends here, but it's much like talking with an > Israeli._

Or an American, for that matter.

Americans still believe they are a "progressive" and model nation for freedom.

Segregation was merely 40 years ago. People go to jail for decades for procession of marijuana. They execute teenagers. They execute (period -- almost all western countries have stopped this shit). People still are told (and ...believe!) that Truman dropped nuclear bombs on civilians "to end the war" and that "his hands were tied". The number of incarcerated people is record breaking for any nation on earth -- and the vast majority of them are black. Plus -- people still believe they have the right (or even ...obligation) to intervene, that is invade, other countries, either to "bring democracy" or because they have "strategic interests" there.

<comment><USER22> >Americans still believe they are a "progressive" and model nation for freedom.

Not all Americans. Look at HN or any semi-educated social circle.

A lot of your points just bring up tit-for-tat historical talking points. Yes a lot of countries have done a lot of terrible things throughout history, especially the west, but we're talking about now. 2013.

Today I just read an article describing how the Chinese have just sent 12 escaped North Koreans back to NK to be welcomed by torture and generations the same fate.

2013 China is a disgusting example of a modern and humane country.

<comment><USER24> But the tit-for-tat is totally relevant! At least for things happening in the present day. Most people's countries are doing things you disagree with: but within a country, even if you oppose someone doing something, you can usually sympathize with the rationale behind it. When the media deflects attention to those evil people with different color skin across the ocean, it's very easy to simplify things.

Case in point: those escaped North Koreans weren't merely refugees but defecting soldiers who had shot their superior officer. Do you think China liked being in that situation? You can either cause a major international row with a nuclear-equipped rabid dog who for historical reasons is sitting a couple hundred miles away from your capital, or you can send a rebellious military unit back for certain execution.

What would you have done? And let's make this sharper: what would your country's military bureaucracy have done?

Why not let people who have actual local knowledge and care about changing things focus on what local people's actual priorities are and the real pain points for human wellbeing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's interesting to see the developing world adopt GNU/Linux. Venezuela created Canaima. [1] Turkey created Pardus. [2] Iran has announced plans for a national distro. [3] Russia has announced plans for its public sector to use free software. [4]

I suspect, though, that many of these initiatives are simply exercises by universities or government IT organizations to understand the technology, rather than to advocate for its use.

[1] <http://canaima.softwarelibre.gob.ve> [2] <http://www.pardus.org.tr> [3] [http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/03/security_fears...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/03/security_fears.html) [4] <http://open.cnews.ru/news/top/index.shtml?2010/12/27/421556>

<comment><USER26> and bosslinux in India <http://bosslinux.in/>

In this case, I think they're trying to make an operating system that uses Indian languages, so that its easier for those in rural areas to operate it

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why wouldn't they go with Red Flag Linux[1]?

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux>

</comment><comment><USER28> Maybe some of the same American schools that are teaching children Mandarin so they can be competitive in the world of the future will now also teach them Linux.

</comment><comment><USER29> Could have a positive effect on consumer grade hardware support for linux in general?

<comment><USER30> Yes it could. I suppose especially on ARM/MIPS SoCs (which many consumer devices are based on). Linux is a one of the few valid choices once you stray from x86, especially as China govt has already said they want to reduce dependence on Google/Android. Maybe that's where Ubuntu comes in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> A month ago I walked through some big computer markets here in China looking for computers pre-installed with Ubuntu, calling out "Have not have Yubentu?", always hearing "Not have!" and only seeing Windows 8 on every screen.

It could be next year I do the same, and _only_ see Ubuntu, with Windows 8 nowhere to be seen. Incredible!

</comment><comment><USER32> _The news means Ubuntu-stewards Canonical will work with China's National University of Defense Technology...

....to ensure that the platform is relevant for the Chinese market... _

Exactly which features does the University of Defense Technology consider relevant? Is Canonical enabling repression or military aggression?

<comment><USER33> Canonical aren't enabling anything. They just repackage open source software (bar their custom themes and Unity).

If the Chinese populous don't like any of the governments additions, then those users can grab the binaries / source code directly and roll their own customisations.

<comment><USER34> If you don't think building a usable linux distro is an enormous amount of work you've never actually tried to do it. Canonical (and the Ubuntu project) is an awful lot more than a few Canonical-originated upstreams.

<comment><USER33> I have built my own distro before. But that's not the point of what I said. I was saying the Canonical didn't write the software in question and that said software could be installed on any distro. Which means it's a bit of a stretch to blame Canonical for enabling censorship in China.

It's a bit like when people blame ISPs when customers use their services for piracy. The difficulty of setting up an ISP (or distro) is completely irrelevant in this discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I imagine this resulting in a mass amount of spyware/viruses/exploits appearing on Linux systems.

</comment><comment><USER36> I know I'm a cynic/paranoid, but is this in any way tied to the increase in cyber espionage? There's been rumors of the US pushing for backdoors and/or not disclosing exploits in windows and applications, is this China's response to that? Is China looking to do something similar with Linux by using Ubuntu as a trojan to get subtle changes added?

I get very concerned anytime any govt entity wants to get involved with a project.

</comment><comment><USER37> Interesting agreement. But at the end, the market will decide what it wants to buy. I hope it will be Ubuntu, but that it another story.

</comment><comment><USER38> I think for Ubuntu to succeed in China, it will need support from Tencent, whose QQ is the most popular IM application in China, and until now doesn't have a decent, full-fledged Linux version.

</comment><comment><USER39> I hate it when they put advertisements on either side of the main content on a web page. Normally I middle-click in that area to scroll.

<comment><USER30> I'm not sure why the register article is the one being most voted up, instead of the official Canonical announcement: [http://www.canonical.com/content/canonical-and-chinese- stand...](http://www.canonical.com/content/canonical-and-chinese-standards- body-announce-ubuntu-collaboration)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> But if this takes off, I'll lose all my security by obscurity. I guess I'll have to go back to BeOS

</comment><comment><USER41> is it really named Kylin such that it would be pronounced "Killin'"? That's awesome.

<comment><USER6> I'm not exactly sure how it's supposed to be pronounced, but it's the romanized Cantonese name for this mythical beast (pronounced more like "chee- leen" in Mandarin): <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qilin>

<comment><USER42> From the wikipedia page; "The Qilin... is said to appear with the imminent arrival or passing of a wise sage or an illustrious ruler." and by doing this, Canicol is bringing Linux to the masses of a country. Ironic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> > PUT for update (and PATCH too).

PUT for update and PATCH for partial update.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I solve my technical inadequacy and make the jump? - <AUTHOR> I'm going to lay it all out there as I feel like I'm approaching a midlife crisis at 35:
I love technical work and programming, however I have no tertiary education directly related to development.  I do dev work outside of work hours for "passion" projects (games related, no illusions of becoming professional) so I believe I could be considered motivated and interested in learning.
I have ~15 years of dev work, however this has always been in a team (currently 5 years) where I am the most technical member.  Whilst I have engaged in constant reading and self directed learning, ultimately I don't think I am up to scratch with expected dev experience/ability/knowledge of tools and workflows.  I held scrum master certification, however my boss was not on board with enforcing principles (not complaining, it's his call) so I would consider myself a "beginner" here as well.
I am well paid in my current job (location: Sydney, Australia, ~125k + benefits), however I would like to change to a company where there is opportunity to work in a team of/with devs so I can learn.
I am experienced with c#, js, typescript, ms sql and primarily write tools to help internal teams/automate business processes/ease reporting.  I don't particularly enjoy web work and my ideal (but not necessity) is to move to statically typed dev work (would love to work with rust or go but I have no professional experience).
I have experience with leading and implementing projects over the APAC region to comply with vendor reporting requirements and automation of business processes.
The truth is I don't know if my skills/experience translate as I have never been part of a truly technical, experienced team. What is an industry recognised way of increasing my technical competence?  Should I be looking at some sort of PM role or something?
I am considering going back to university to do a degree in computer science, but if there are alternatives I would love to hear about them. <comment><USER2> From what you say it sounds like you are a great developer.

It is worth defining your goal because you speak about Scrum Certification and Project Management, and also of studying more CS. So are you looking to get deeper in the tech or move to management type roles?

<comment><AUTHOR> When I was younger I wanted to move in to management type roles. However I have never had (or made?) the opportunity so I feel like these are outside of my short to medium term goals. Moving to a company that offers advancement would be an ideal, but in the meantime I feel like I need to make myself a compelling candidate.

I totally understand around difference between pm/dev work though - in a perfect world I want dev work, however I am willing to accept it's not a possibility for me at my age whilst maintaining my current income.

I don't have a technical network for job opportunities (due to non technical teams) and job ads/recruiters seem to filter on technical proficiency.

Another commenter said I should double down on basics and meet end user needs - that's precisely what I do. I get things done, but can I demonstrate technical knowledge or professional experience with language x? Can I define what a singleton is? I'm not so sure.

<comment><USER3> I want to reiterate the earlier commenter's words: focus. You seem to be spread thin amongst various roles in a typical software/tech company, from product manager/scrum master to developer. Hone your attention to what you really want and if you aren't sure, then start anywhere. You won't know until you try!

I'm not sure if LinkedIn is big in Australia but recruiters in America will scramble to you with offers for possible jobs if you update your profile with the latest tech and frameworks. Your non-standard background definitely will attract interest so give it a go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Double down on basics you have missed in the past, including mathematics and logic. Learn more about what end users need and code to meet those needs.</comment>


Show HN: QReserve, Search engine for research equipment - <AUTHOR> https://www.qreserve.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, we're here to chat and answer any questions!</comment>


Carcinogens Have Infiltrated the Generic Drug Supply in the U.S. - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-09-12/how-carcinogen-tainted-generic-drug-valsartan-got-past-the-fda <comment><USER2> > By 2014, the FDA had closed its offices in Shanghai and Guangzhou, leaving > only the Beijing office with inspectors who could visit Chinese factories on > short notice.

> The FDA checks less than 1% of drugs for impurities or potency before > letting them into the country.

For a regulator body who's job it is to make sure medical products are safe and available. These comments, if true, lend credability that the FDA is more regulatory capture than actual useful regulation.

> The FDA's relationship with manufacturers like Huahai, on the other hand, > isn't simple at all. If Huahai wants to make its own version of a generic > drug and export it to the U.S., it needs FDA approval. But if Huahai > supplies the main ingredient to a company that finishes the drug and sells > it in the U.S., it's required only to keep the FDA informed of any changes > to the manufacturing process.

Good, now you have a US company you can actually prosecute severely. The $/mass of phamacuticals means testing a small sample of each batch is super easy and if you know the manufacture process it's not hard to know what secondary products/contaiminents you need to test for. This is pure negligence on the FDA's and the US importers part.

> "The only element who cares in this whole global supply chain is patients"

Not if you actually fine the American importers into the ground. And ban the at fault over seas companies.

<comment><USER3> >> The FDA checks less than 1% of drugs for impurities or potency before letting them into the country.

> For a regulator body who's job it is to make sure medical products are safe > and available. These comments, if true, lend credability that the FDA is > more regulatory capture than actual useful regulation.

I wonder though if this statement misrepresents the facts. If they check only 1% of the entire import volume at random, that is totally normal and what I'd expect them to do.

<comment><USER4> I agree, I think the statement is ambiguous.

1% of all products (e.g. one pill from every bottle of 100 pills) being tested seems like plenty.

1% of shipments (1 out of 100 shipments is sampled) seems insufficient.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very ambiguous.

Generally how it works is you submit a proposed purity level to the FDA, with rationale and backup by your own validated analyses.

The FDA dives into it and says "this is reasonable" or "this won't work" or "based on the chemistry, you need to test for X also".

Then they require you to "release" any product you make, showing that it conforms to the agreed upon purity. If it fails, they expect you to follow up and figure out why.

Note, most of this is done in good faith - the FDA isn't repeating the science in a lab, but they pay enough attention that if you're making things up, it'll be apparent in the data. The CMC (chemistry manufacturing controls) section of the NDA can be hundreds of pages long.

When it comes to inspections, they are typically random (but if you have a bad track record they happen more often). They can happen any time and they'll look at all your processes, not just for a specific drug. Don't have a record that you cleaned your equipment between runs? That's a paddlin'.

Repeatedly run tests until you get a "pass" result? Yeah, your product will get banned from importation.

But yes, much of the regulation is based on good faith simply because the manpower required to verify everything made would be massive.

<comment><USER5> "much of the regulation is based on good faith simply because the manpower required to verify everything made would be massive"

This is where I wish there were more tolerance for enough government spending to employ as many people as it would take to test properly. We're talking about medication being used multiple times a day for long term-amongst many uses.

<comment><USER6> The FDA has been downsized many times over the past three decades. So what we're seeing here is not at all unexpected.

<comment><AUTHOR> The FDA's budget is more than 6x what it was in 1992.[1]. An increased every year since then.

What do you mean downsized?

[1][https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R44576.html#_Toc82198...](https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R44576.html#_Toc8219812)

<comment><USER6> That's no inflation adjusted. And it's also not adjusted for processing load. But it does show the greatly increased role of user fees, which I gather has facilitated regulatory capture.

<comment><AUTHOR> Inflation hasn't been 600% since 1992.

Not sure what processing load is, but if they're asked to do more that could be an issue, but I wouldn't call it a cut.

<comment><USER6> I do remember reading about cuts in FDA resources. As an excuse for why they'd missed so many violations.

Checking, I see that it was Reagan era cuts.[0] So the timeline that you cited begins in 1992, which was probably the minimum funding level.[1,2]

Also, Hatch-Waxman was approved in 1984, which increased the workload considerably. And then there was the first generic drug scandal in the late 80s. That's what I was thinking of.

0) [https://academic.oup.com/shm/article- abstract/29/1/202/24722...](https://academic.oup.com/shm/article- abstract/29/1/202/2472270?redirectedFrom=fulltext)

1) [https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R44576.html#_Toc82198...](https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R44576.html#_Toc8219812)

2) [https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkv106](https://sci- hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkv106)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Really? It's 2019, there is no argument to be had over this.

Impurity problems have occasionally come up over the years, but they have largely been addressed quickly by existing regulations. And at no point have they ever approached the level of risk posed by the illnesses they are prescribed to treat.

While the risk of impurities in the generic drug supply certainly warrant research, the percentage of issues again doesn't approach significance with comparison to these pervasive illnesses.

Nothing is risk-free. Eating food has risk, taking paracetamol has risk, getting blood drawn has risk.

Saying something has risk without talking about the amount of risk and the context of the risks it mitigates is pointless.

Drug impurities in generics introduce negligible amounts of risk. Eating peanuts in public or going for a drive is much riskier, and we almost all do those things without a second thought. By contrast, access to affordable drugs mitigate huge risks: the illnesses we medicate can, did and do cause horrific harm up to and including death, and do so very well.

The pharmaceutical industry is not immune to criticism, it is just they have weathered all the reasonable criticism leveled at them. If you are willing to drive in a car, taking generics that could should be a complete non-issue for you.

In an era of fake news and increasing doubt in the medical establishment, publishing reports like this is not only irresponsible, but unethical. This only adds fuel to the fire of unwarranted skepticism towards our medical system.

<comment><USER8> I thought the article did a decent job of explaining exactly what the problem is in this case and communicating the scale of the risk. Your comment, on the other hand, sounds like a kneejerk dismissal entirely based on the headline not agreeing with what you thought was true.

Yes generics have proven to be broadly safe. That doesn't mean there aren't still issues that need to be addressed by tweaking or adding regulation. Yes even with carcinogens the contaminated generics are probably better than taking nothing. That doesn't mean that the contamination is acceptable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apparently NDMA has also been found in Zantac (ranitidine), a common OTC heartburn medicine.

The FDA has issued an alert - [https://www.fda.gov/safety/medwatch-safety- alerts-human-medi...](https://www.fda.gov/safety/medwatch-safety-alerts-human- medical-products/zantac-ranitidine-safety-information-ndma-found-samples-some- ranitidine-medicines)

<comment><USER10> And I would have never learned about this unless I was surfing hacker news. Bleh.

From the NDMA wiki: [NDMA] is also used to create cancer in rats for cancer research.

That is super alarming.

<comment><USER11> Yep. Just happened to see this [1] article out of the corner of my eye while browsing. Really concerning. And from the sound of it, this Valisure place, not the FDA, is the one who discovered the issue. One wonders what use regulators are these days.

My infant daughter was prescribed ranitidine for reflux from age 3 months to about age 6 months. Anyone with more chemistry knowledge than me want to venture any guesses about how concerned I should be?

[1][https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/13/health/zantac-cancer- ndma...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/13/health/zantac-cancer-ndma.html)

<comment><USER12> Do you have any of the pills left? You could get the leftovers tested. But I would ask your pediatrician. I would guess you probably don't need to be specifically concerned.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I replied to another commenter, but I have some of the syrup left over and I'm sending it to be tested. Turns out the folks who discovered this have publicly-available testing. I'm thinking that the limited duration is a good thing. Fingers crossed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would pay good money for a supply chain based "consumer reports" so I actually know what's in my products eg

\- medicines! \- supplements \- food \- clothing

Clearly in the USA their is gigantic demand for organic / harmful chemical free products.

<comment><USER14> This could be an interesting case for blockchains. I normally am not a proponent of seeing everything thru that lens, but having a proper chain that is publicly verifiable is in the public's interest. That said, there's not a lot of incentive for people to reveal their supply chains — it's often trade secret or hidden for a reason.

If there was a market behind it, then there might be a way. But good luck getting Samsung to tell you where their cobalt came from, or if some generic drug was made in a dangerous lab. Even if you knew it was Generic Factory 1736, it's hard to know if that's good or bad.

<comment><USER15> I carry a lot of guilt for having "oh, blockchains could help" thoughts quite a lot. A federally supported blockchain used as a public notary and other official functions, as you mentioned, seems like it may have a place in the future.

<comment><USER16> Someone really needs to create a version of the cloud to butt extension that replaces "blockchain" with "database".

What you're describing is a useful application for a _database_. Mixing "blockchain" into it would only hurt the viability of the database, not bring any obvious benefit.

Your comment makes so much more sense with the word database:

"A federally supported database used as a public notary and other official functions, as you mentioned, seems like it may have a place in the future."

Indeed.

<comment><USER14> Normally I'd agree with you, but given this is all about verification it might make sense to distribute both trust as well as usage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if the point of this, is to have us weigh getting "brand name" more seriously. There is no sensible reason to pay a premium for brand name if the generic is chemically equivalent.

<comment><USER18> This another in a long string of failures in generic regulations that underscore broader problems pertaining to regulation in the US healthcare system. There's this theoretical land of regulation, what the consumers and citizens are encouraged to presume, and what actually happens.

It's been common, for instance, for people to repeatedly be berated for paying more for name brand. Studies in fact, of the public health economics of it, why people pay more for name brands, trying to understand it as if there are deficiencies in consumer reasoning.

This is despite repeated problems with generic suppliers overseas, mainly India, diluting medications. This was uncovered, problems were corrected, and then it happened again.

And now this.

So who exactly is the rational purchaser? The person who buys generics under the assumption that they are chemically equivalent, or the skeptic who prefers to have transparency about where their medications are coming from, and purchases brand names?

My point isn't to berate the FDA as incompetent -- I think they're overburdened -- but I do think there are broader problems involving a disconnect between how we discuss regulatory systems in the US and what actually happens. To me, this is just the tip of the iceberg. My personal opinion is the FDA needs to focus solely on this kind of problem -- ensuring drugs are what they are labeled to be -- with maybe some substantial research into effectiveness -- and to drop its regulatory role as drug police.

<comment><USER19> I only buy generics from known reputable manufacturers, these are mostly locally made EU ones, bit more expensive than big pharma, say Teva or even maybe Sanofi (they're very likely local though) but at least predictable and it helps local business.

(Polish, Czech and Slovakian.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you haven't read it, I highly recommend the book 'Bottle of Lies' which was released a few months ago. It details systemic corruption in a number of generic pharmaceutical manufacturers.

It also details how the FDA is struggling with monitoring overseas manufacturing.

<comment><USER21> I just came to write this :-). Here's the link for anyone interested

[https://www.amazon.in/Bottle-Lies-Inside-Story-Generic- ebook...](https://www.amazon.in/Bottle-Lies-Inside-Story-Generic- ebook/dp/B07JG49BQW)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow, to formulate a generic drug and export it to the U.S. requires the FDA stamp, but if you generate components used in manufacture of US-made drugs get literally no FDA oversight. How can this be?.

<comment><USER23> I made this account to respond to exactly this question.

The FDA's legal basis to regulate medicines is actually incredibly weak and really hasn't changed much since the 1930s. One of the examples is exactly this case. The FDA only regulates finished medicines in two cases a) brand name or b) generic equivalents. Leaving aside brand name drugs for the moment getting approval to sell a generic equivalent doesn't look anything like what you would expect. What people generally think is that generic drugs are 'copies' of existing brand name drugs and the FDA cares about making sure the generic guys are producing the same drug as the brand name one.

This isn't what happens at all. A manufacturer has to demonstrate similar blood level uptake as the FDA approved equivalent drug using a very similar approval process for the brand name drug. This requires an incredible effort that is substantially the same as getting an original drug approved.

The bottom line is that the FDA doesn't examine the on-going manufacturing of the drug much or supplier reliability much at all. If a manufacturer can pass blood level equivalence nothing else really matters. This equivalence is only valid for the direct manufacturting producer of the drug, not the company marketing it. The reality is that if you want to get FDA approval for a generic you might as well partner with a firm outside the US that knows how to handle this process because its a waste of money jumping through FDA hoops to certify a new facility in the US.

Once you have proved equivalance you can start selling the drug. At this point, the FDA is basically done. The FDA basically dones't care anymore and has very weak sanctions to enforce safety compliance.

The FDA can't do anything about this situation on its own; the way drugs are approved is directly established by law that dates back to the 1930s. I notice a lot of people in this thread suggesting that FDA leadership is bought off and does the work of the drugs companies. I assure you this is not the case.

FDA oversight of pharmacutecial ingredients is accomplished under an entirely different legal regime that has nothing to do with drug approval whatsoever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Are these problems only limited to the US? Do Canada or the EU have similar issues? Do they not import chemicals from similar suppliers or do they screen the better?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's an issue in Canada[1] and the EU[2].

[1][https://www.bcpharmacists.org/news/update- august-18-2018-dru...](https://www.bcpharmacists.org/news/update- august-18-2018-drugs-containing-valsartan-being-recalled-due-contamination- potential)

[2][https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines/human/referrals/angio...](https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines/human/referrals/angiotensin- ii-receptor-antagonists-sartans-containing-tetrazole-group)

<comment><USER25> What about India? Are Indian generics affected as well?

<comment><USER19> Very likely too, including other issues previously found I'd expect anything to happen there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This whole episode of "self regulation" of pharma companies by the FDA reminds my of the FAA's acceptance of Boeing's "self regulation" on the 737 MAX.

</comment><comment><USER27> [http://archive.is/VN1hl](http://archive.is/VN1hl)

<comment><USER22> Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Probably the best source of information is from this long-time blogging Medicinal Chemist here:

[https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/01/04/th...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/01/04/the- sartan-contamination-story)

This story has some speculation about why different molecules of the same therapeutic category are implicated:

[https://www.gmp-compliance.org/gmp-news/valsartan-what- cause...](https://www.gmp-compliance.org/gmp-news/valsartan-what-caused-the- contamination)

</comment><comment><USER29> From the Wikipedia page [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-Nitrosodimethylamine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-Nitrosodimethylamine)

"NDMA is a yellow, oily liquid with a faint, characteristic odor and a sweet taste."

"characteristic" doesn't say much, but I often wonder how we know about the _taste_ of a highly toxic chemical like this one --- and if someone died for it.

<comment><USER19> You wouldn't taste it in a drug. Low concentrations and bound in binders or hidden by taste additives in syrups.

Typically researchers tasted small samples, not too risky. Usually characteristic has a specific chemical kind of taste.

Yes, people have tasted solvents, glue and more nasty stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Adding to this some people may not know unlike here in Canada supplements in the US are not regulated. Herein Canada they are treated as a drug and regulated by Health Canada.

There have been recalls of supplements from the US due to contamination or mislabeling (for example, adding stimulants or steroids but not disclosing that). Although supplements here in Canada can still be questionable in quality.

<comment><USER19> Technically FDA handles supplements and foods too, but they're really too small to handle the volume of this market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Most of the gardening implements, and most of the cheap shower heads in my local home improvement store say they cause cancer. I assume people buy them anyway, or the store would stock something else.

So are these drugs with carcinogens of more concern than the other stuff? Should we be more concerned about the other stuff?

<comment><USER32> All of my fishing weights and some lures have these warnings. It's because of lead. I certainly don't put them in my mouth and neither should you.

Shower heads are very concerning. Never seen those warnings.

<comment><USER31> Lead isn't particularly known as a carcinogen, but a neurotoxin. I guess it might be, but is it "known to the state of California"?

The things I noticed that almost all had California warnings were shovels, rakes, etc. I don't really know why these would need to have lead in them, if that's what it was.

I did buy a shower head, and I did buy one without the warning. But, I also thought - maybe this one has as much or more carcinogens as the cheap ones, but it doesn't have a label _simply because it 's not sold in California_?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Quick question. Title says "generic", but obviously there is a massive economic interest in switching people from generics to non-generics. Is this contamination also possible in non-generics???

<comment><USER34> Sure, it is possible, but because the brand name passed the carcinogenicity tests in animals, and if the manufacturer kept their same suppliers and formulation, the risk should be much lower.

Whether that's true or not in practice is a different matter. But yes, I would have more confidence in a brand name after this report, which makes me cynical about the intentions of the reporting in the first place.

Maybe I'm totally being manipulated by big pharma, but I'll switch my medication to brand name as soon as possible, and that's just because my insurance is good. Very few people have that option.

<comment><USER35> > _the brand name passed the carcinogenicity tests in animals, and if the > manufacturer kept their same suppliers and formulation_

I really doubt this is the common case. The studies with animals and the clinical studies with human for safety are very small, so I guess they use a special batch. For production at scale they probably use some industrial method that is cheaper. They may also change the provider, or build it in another factory they own in other country.

Also, every drug has precursors, and has precursors have precursors, you can't produce all of them so you must buy some. And with many of them there are more possibilities of changes that introduce contamination.

What you get with a brand name is more quality control in the incoming products, more quality control in the process and more quality control in the final product. (And also more marketing, sometimes it is only marketing.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Now imagine what level of contamination is going on in supplements which are completely unregulated in the US (unlike the EU).

</comment><comment><USER37> Don't get generic drugs unless you absolutely have to. You are legally unable to sue if you get life altering side effects from the drugs. Which seems even worse after this news story.

</comment><comment><USER38> Welcome to the future of warfare.

<comment><USER39> This deserves many more upvotes. External agents find cheap ways to destroy the country, and some internal agents sacrifice common man for quarterly bonus.

A virally popular device (non-prescription and cheap, for god's sake) to detect toxicity levels, and connected app to visualize the health impact will serve as a wake-up call.

<comment><USER40> Completely agree. You'd think that when something like this happens, it would be followed up by a string of arrests. There is a total lack of accountability in this country. This country is totally corrupted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> > Some of the contaminated valsartan contains as much as 17 micrograms of NDMA > in a single pill. That's equivalent to eating 48 pounds of bacon. The FDA > estimates that for every 8,000 people who took the highest dose of > contaminated valsartan daily for four years, there would be one additional > occurrence of cancer.

Given the relatively small significance and the fact that this article was published in an issue with the blurb "Can You Trust Generics?" on the cover, I'm gonna say this is just more FUD from Bloomberg.

<comment><USER42> For a blood pressure medication, 1 in 8,000 is not a small risk. Serzone, an antidepressant, has a similar risk rate for inducing liver failure, and was taken off the market.

<comment><USER28> For nefazodone, we had other antidepressants (so why take the risk?), and it was only taken off the market when it went generic (lol).

For BP medication, hopefully at least 1 in 100 recipients are benefitting from it. Probably more like 1 in 10. Overall, don't stop taking it. Reducing the cancer risk is possible and feasible in this case without changing therapy.

We'll probably see further testing of APIs and validation of synthetic route changes in the future because of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Good to know that the US health care system will impose these individuals with the cost. Shame on them for not properly researching the product. They should have considered their consumer choices against the possibility of cancer years later. No doubt the medical bankruptcy some will have is deserved.

Obviously sarcasm. This is, however, how the current US medical system behaves. It's impossible that these patients would have the capacity to evaluate medication sources like they would any other product. Many likely had no opportunity or choice. Yet the US supports a system that punishes an individual for aspects well beyond the individual.

<comment><USER12> You should able to sue the pharmacy and your insurer for sourcing and requiring tainted products that are not quality controlled. I would expect some class action lawsuits to appear shortly.

<comment><USER44> I hope so. After reading the Bloomberg article, I looked up my Losartan Rx. It's from a manufacturer's lot that was pulled by the FDA on Feb 28 of this year.

The kicker is, my (major chain) pharmacy sold it to me this July...

<comment><USER12> I would get a lawyer. Sounds like you are due a nice settlement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The solution is to have three classes of quality for every drug: lower class, middle class, and upper class.

The lower class drugs must have pills with Chinese characters on them, and packaging with Chinese writing, and an English insert. They get minimal testing.

The upper class pills have American flags impressed on them, cost a metric tonne more, but are tested rigorously by private agencies (that are paid from the extra cost).

The aim here is propoganda: have people associate poor quality with Chinese goods and good quality with American goods.

(There is no middle class of drugs: if you are a middle earner you either decide to be either cheap, or to keep up appearances).

<comment><USER34> > have people associate poor quality with Chinese goods

Nobody is going to associate poor quality with Chinese goods while iPhones and most luxury continue to be made in China.

> keep up appearances

Nobody should know what drugs I'm on, much less the brand I take.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Too many Bloomberg articles make it to the front page of Hacker News and that is unfortunate because Bloomberg is corporate media at its most diabolical. Bloomberg has a long history of publishing articles to earn moral credit and then cashing out on that credit from time to time with articles that clearly favor a small group of special corporate interests. Today, the story is that generics are harmful and cause cancer -- we better pay 20x for those name brands. Before, there were unsubstantiated claims about microprocessors used by Apple that were spiked with surveillance hardware: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the- big-h...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how- china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies)

Don't be a Bloomberg shill. Ask yourself when you see an article published by Bloomberg who they are really serving with these stories.

This comment was downvoted in about 5 seconds from when it was published. This was a comment at the bottom of a comment thread. There is no way for that to have happened other than by a bot. Bloomberg uses third party-controlled bots on HN to control the discussion. Sad.</comment>


1GB Ram & SSD Cloud Hosting for $6 - <AUTHOR> https://www.ubiquityservers.com/cloud Since there were high amount of interest on Digital Ocean, ( $10 for 1GB Ram and SSD Cloud ), this may be of interest to some. <comment><USER2> This is pretty much a free advertisement for non-competitive pricing.

You have no idea how many neighbors you have on that vps.

And that "vcpu" is likely a hyperthreaded core, not physical, so it's a "half core" in reality.

        Monthly	vCPU	Memory	SSD	Transfer
        $6		1	1GB	10GB	1TB
        $12		1	2GB	20GB	1TB
        $18		1	3GB	30GB	2TB
        $24		2	4GB	40GB	3TB
        $48		2	8GB	60GB	4TB
        $96		4	16GB	100GB	5TB
        $192	8	32GB	200GB	6TB

At that "4 core" (virtual) pricing I'd take dedicated from OVH instead [1]

The $6 pricepoint is likely to just get you in the door for an upsell.

Why would you subject yourself to unknown neighbors with unknown abusive habits on the server resources when you can just get a dedicated with SSD for less money and co-host your own projects with known behaviors (and without the overhead of a vps hypervisor).

[1] <http://www.ovh.com/us/dedicated-servers/sp_32g_ssd.xml>

<comment><USER3> As long as you're realistic it's not a bad deal, it'd act as a lovely irssi/ssh machine that I don't need to worry about for me.

<comment><USER4> You can also get 2 free servers a month from Amazon.com (1 Linux one windows). It's actually 750 hours each so could use more than one at a time if you turned them off afterword. <http://aws.amazon.com/free/>

Note: _These free tiers are only available to new AWS customers, and are available for 12 months following your AWS sign-up date_

<comment><USER5> Please don't present this as equivalent. AWS's free tier, amortized over the life of a five-year web service, isn't free, or even cheap.

Now, I _did_ make pretty good use of AWS myself for that first year... and then it ran out, and suddenly AWS was much more expensive than Linode (and more recently, DigitalOcean.)

When all you want is "a thing to keep your Rails app running for its measly 10K hits a day" AWS _loses_ hands-down. It's just not their use-case.

<comment><USER4> At 2c an hour * 365.2425 days * 24 hours a day /12 months * 4/5 = 11.70$ a month. But, if you want an always on connection for 1+ years you can get discounts dropping down to 8$ a month and if you link it to a high volume account you can get another 20% discount.

Which sounds cheap to me.

<comment><USER5> Where does the first 20% discount come from? (And I would completely disregard the second one; if you know someone who has a _high volume account_ , you can probably get some spare slices just with a polite word.)

More importantly, though: you're assuming Micro instances. Micro instances are _tolerable_ , but not really comparable to anything offered to paying customers at even the most downmarket VPS. The moment you want to burst the CPU of a Micro for any extended period (say, starting up Unicorn workers), your instance will become a chugging morass.

When I was on AWS, I had to go in and reboot my instance every other time I deployed an update to it, because the update process ran just long enough to prompt a 99%-CPU-throttle. At that point my server was basically wedged, since new HTTP requests were still trickling into the old app servers and queuing up (with the throttling, it now was too slow to handle them before more arrived), leaving the CPU unable to "relax" enough to get out of the throttled state even after the deploy was over.

> if you want an always on connection for 1+ years you can get discounts

 _With a down payment_. You have to calculate the NPV of the cashflow, not just the aggregate sum; $10/mo is a lot easier to manage than $100 + $8/mo.

But disregaring that: even with a three-year term--costing $257 up-front, and committing you to payments in a similar way to a cell-phone contract--it looks like an Small will still cost $15.80/mo. Why put yourself in such a bind just for a not-that-good slice? (Network throughput is one of the few acceptable answers to that.)

This does all assume that your app that will live comfortably on any consumer workstation machine for the foreseeable future (its growth has already plateaued, in other words.) If there's any possibility of hockey-stick growth in your app's future, AWS becomes a lot more attractive.

<comment><USER4> You said "amortized over the life of a five-year web service" that's 4 years of cost + 1 year free.

As to Cost it's $100 for 3 years at .5cents an hour or 63$ for 1 year at .5cents an hour. I used the 63$ for 4 years vs 3 for 100 plus one at 63. If you really care about the time value of money your first year is free so it's better than than paying up front for that first year any way you do the numbers.

PS: I don't actually use AWS I was just defending them from the old 'there vary expensive' which I found to generally be false. Most of the time your time is worth far more than hosting costs especially when dealing with such small servers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's the #1 question I have for any of these hosts, and I never see it answered: how stable is network throughput?

I run what amounts to a fancy real-time chat service. Are my users guaranteed a slice of the pipe? Do you have the resources to make sure they won't lag horribly if my neighbor is getting DDoSed?

Keep in mind that there is a difference between "we actively make sure you'll have a good experience" and "you happened to get provisioned on a machine with good neighbors", even though the anecdotes will be identical.

<comment><USER6> Disclaimer: I work for UpCloud, also a cloud hosting company.

This is a great question. Something I've been thinking about a lot is also the benchmarking of redundancy and the protection of one's data.

It's easy to benchmark performance, but as Pirelli stated in their advertising: speed is nothing without control. I feel the same about online hosting providers.

Naturally I have no knowledge of US redundancy solutions, but it's one of the most critical yet toughest things to compare when choosing a new hosting provider.

Best of luck to US though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> LOL the site is now down :) bad sign for a hosting service!

<comment><USER8> Yeah that about kills the allure for ... well, anyone who wants a site that's up.

<comment><USER9> Not so ubiquitous... oh! the irony!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why does every host offer a plan that scales at the same rate in every column (CPU, RAM, Disk space, bytes/month)?

I can think of almost no application which requires lots of all of these. Why isn't there a host which allows you to scale your own requirements? Is it a technical thing, or just another form of "oversell and underprovision because most people won't use their plan"?

<comment><USER6> We offer completely scalable hosting at UpCloud. You get to choose your CPU, RAM, disk space and bandwidth is billed by the actual traffic.

So I wouldn't call it a technical thing, but more of a strategic decision in how you want to position your company + offering.

<comment><USER5> > and bandwidth is billed by the actual traffic

Is that billed by usage, or billed by throughput? I'd love to get a cheap rate on something like "guaranteed 10Gbps port; 100GB monthly transfer cap."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Red flags:

> Ubiquity offers a 100% uptime SLA on our entire Cloud infrastructure

> In the unlikely event that one of the solid state hard disks fails on the > Ubiquity Cloud there will be no data loss and no impact on the cloud > instance's performance

<comment><USER12> The reddest flag of them all being that the site is currently down, especially if they were promising 100% uptime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm now confused about what "Cloud Hosting" is. I thought it was a "virtual" dedicated server. All that ubiquity provides is a control panel: > Our managed cloud servers come with cPanel/WHM access. No root access is provided. How is this different from regular hosting you can get elsewhere far cheaper? Is it just the promises of RAM and SSD?

<comment><USER14> today everybody is on "cloud", it sounds cool not to be there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Server down. I hope this doesn't reflect their offering.

</comment><comment><USER16> Seems to be a pretty good offer, even in comparison to digital-ocean (<https://www.digitalocean.com/>). Has anyone hosted anything with them before? I'd like to know whether they're dependable.

<comment><USER17> DigitalOcean's deal still seems nicer. Two times the disk and two times the traffic.

I guess it depends on what you want for your fiver (5-6$). Ubiquity's deal has twice the RAM.

I'm suspicious regarding dependability, which I assume one should be in this price range irregardless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Lol, I migrated from Linode to DigitalOcean one month ago. The pricing of UbiquityServers seems very tempting, however I will calm down this time :) Anyway, has somebody had a chance to try both DO & US?

<comment><USER19> Could you possibly take some time to tell us how the switch from Linode went and how you feel about it now? (I'm a Linode customer)

<comment><USER20> I made the same switch.

I had a Linode 512 and switched to a 2x512 Dropplet setup and put my Database on one 512 and my Rails app server on the other.

My stuff runs as quickly if not quicker and I spend $10/mo less. In addition to this I also have a clear scaling path (e.g. If my DB grows I can up it to a 1gb. If my traffic grows I can either move the app server to a 1gb or maybe get a few more 512's and setup a load balancer.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I am still waiting for Linode to React. At the moment i am still trying to find a host that sit somewhere in the middle between DO and Linode.

<comment><USER21> They have been. All servers are now 8 core and they cranked the bandwidth allowance up by about 10x if I remember. Apparently they are meant to be increasing RAM soon but I'm not sure how reliable that information is. However, as they've done everything else it does make sense.

RAM is the only thing that I feel Linode is lacking as of late.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Whoa - Sweet Price.

If you want to compare to digital ocean they are having a coupon code on Twitter - Includes 512MB RAM, 20GB SSD Disk, & 1TB Transfer for $5/mo.! Use promo code "SSDTWEET" for a $10 credit.

</comment><comment><USER23> Website seems down. Not a good sign.

<comment><USER24> It was still down when I checked about 22 minutes after your post. Definitely not a good sign.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> At first glance, it doesn't seem any more compelling than DO. DO and upcloud were nice enough to offer some free credits to the HN crowd for testing.

</comment><comment><USER26> I use ChicagoVPS as my VPS and it is pretty decent for being so cheap.

<comment><USER27> I did until their massive security breach a few months ago.

Also I lost all my data and backups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Anyone can give a first-hand experience on this cloud hosting offer?

</comment><comment><USER29> Page wont load, great advertising lol</comment>


EigenCoder: Programming Stereotypes - <AUTHOR> http://trestletech.com/2016/03/09/eigencoder/ <comment><USER2> Hey, man, you'd be sad too if you lived to see what modern man would do to programming languages:

[http://www.computerhistory.org/fellowawards/_media/img/fello...](http://www.computerhistory.org/fellowawards/_media/img/fellows/2004_niklaus_wirth.jpg)

[http://kazimirmajorinc.com/Documents/Why-Dijkstra-didnt- like...](http://kazimirmajorinc.com/Documents/Why-Dijkstra-didnt-like- Lisp/McCarthy.jpg)

The old guys wrote the best stuff:

[https://cr.yp.to/bib/1995/wirth.pdf](https://cr.yp.to/bib/1995/wirth.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Completing the holy trinity of bearded computer pioneers looking appalled at the modern age: [https://www.netmeister.org/blog/images/dijkstra-quick-n- dirt...](https://www.netmeister.org/blog/images/dijkstra-quick-n-dirty.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In addition to the caveats they list, there may be systematic biases as to who includes a profile pic and who doesn't. Even an enormous sample and perfect inferences from the face API can't surmount a bad dataset (bad depending on what you are trying to learn from it)

<comment><USER5> To be fair, they did address that:

        Lang 	FacesDetected
        ruby 	71
        r 		38
        javascript 	60
        java 	47
        html 	59
        go 		53
        cpp 	34
        c 		24
        python 	49
        php 	66
        perl 	45
        swift 	49
        csharp 	61

<comment><USER4> Not quite. That relates to sample sizes and, as far as interpretation goes, it's dealt with as if the rest were missing at random. In reality, they are probably missing not at random, but in relation to other characteristics, changing the interpretation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This site crashed my browser 3 out of 3 attempts. Firefox 44.0.2 on Android 5.1.1

<comment><USER7> Happened to me on Firefox 45.0 on Windows.

But when I restarted it gave a popup saying there was an unresponsive script and asking if I wanted to stop it.

Script: data:application/x-javascript;…B9XX0se30sWzMxMV0pKDMxMSl9KTs=:40

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> R does give me a smile more often than most other languages (everything is just so easy), though I also have a big beard. Interesting article.

</comment><comment><USER9> I felt I should point out that cpp is probably on the bottom end of the facial hair graph as a result of being on top of the age graph...

</comment><comment><USER10> There's only one conclusion to draw from the age data:

Somewhere between 50 and 60, software developers realize that their skill can be better put to work managing the retirement fund.

</comment><comment><USER11> I chuckled when I saw that java programmers smile the least.

</comment><comment><USER12> Do software engineers stop programming at 35?

<comment><USER13> Hopefully not :) Check the "Density" tab to see eg. 53 year old programmers recorded for C# and Python.

<comment><USER14> Even better, looks like there are a few programmers (CPP and HTML) >60 years old, though the graph shows n=0 for those data points, so do those guys actually exist? If so, the oldest programmer is 86.4, now _that 's_ impressive.

<comment><USER13> I was also wondering about that. Y-axis values are rounded to integers, even in the data source contained in a script node on the page.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


To be the best entrepreneur you must bag groceries - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/what-i-learned-building/bcdb1951d860

<comment><USER2> I like this. Anyone can put groceries in a bag, but there's more complexity there than one might think.

A bad bagger will just throw stuff in without thought. A good bagger will put the heavy stuff at the bottom and fragile stuff at the top. An expert bagger will do that but also keep cold items together, separate raw meat from everything else, optimize the use of space, evenly distribute the weight between the bags, keep the center of gravity as low as possible, and do it all with a smile.

Most baggers never make it past good. It doesn't take talent. It doesn't take strength, agility, or high intelligence. It takes a different way of viewing the world. It takes having pride in your work, even when no one else cares.

Find the experts and hire them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing your thoughts, teovall. I love the analogy! I think in the age of awards and accolades many have forgotten the value of an honest day's work.</comment></comment>


Intel's "Tick Tock" Model for Innovation  - <AUTHOR> http://www.intel.com/technology/tick-tock/index.htm

<comment><USER2> This is BS in terms of engineering, but it says a lot about the problem Intel has to solve to stay in business.

According to Hennessy & Patterson, 90% of performance gains come from better architecture. That's the tock. The other 10% came from clock speed [1], which was a side effect of better fab, the tick. But you mostly want better fab to get more transistors so you can build a better architecture.

So here's Intel's problem. They sink a huge amount of money (costs also follow Moore's Law) to upgrade their fabs before they release a new chip. Then they have nothing new to sell for a year or more while they fit it to the fab.

In the nineties they smoothed out demand by selling up-clocked versions of old chips, training consumers to think that more MHz = more faster. That's less effective now that clock speeds have stabilized, so they've been pitching lower power consumption instead. It's not really the same, because "faster CPU" in the 1990s really meant "it can run new software."

It will be interesting to see how this model will fare in the cloud era. If most CPUs live in data centers, most purchasers will choose based on power consumption and pay less attention to architecture.

[1] Until clock speed stopped changing. Clock speeds may even drop for a while to make parallel engineering easier. cf. [http://www.amazon.com/Computer- Architecture-Quantitative-App...](http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture- Quantitative-Approach-3rd/dp/1558605967)

<comment><USER3> As a general rule of thumb Performance for a given program for any CPU is : frequency _times_ Instructions completed/cycle _times_ number of instructions . The number of instructions is sort of fixed based on your ISA (ie. whether the machine is CISC like the x86 or RISC-like like the MIPS/ARM). What happened in the Pentium4 era, was that the focus was almost completely on the frequency part of the equation rather than the Instructions completed per cycle.

Intel's focus on new fabs is not just for a higher clock speed- that's a useful side benefit. The real reason is significantly lower cost/die. The same wafer can now produce many more cpu dies (that are slightly faster), increasing their profit/unit.

With regard to data centers, we are already seeing a move to power efficient architectures (with the Core family of cpus) versus pure performance. However, especially in the data center model, performance is still a critical metric that probably is not going away any time soon.

<comment><USER2> Datacenter operators pay attention to cost of ownership per increment of performance. They'll be very interested in faster chips but only when they can run an extra virtual instance on each server without raising power and cooling costs, for example.

On clock speeds you're mistaken. Yes, Intel went from 20 to 1000 MHz during the nineties, and their _marketing_ was all about clocks. But during that period, they also added 20-stage pipelines, out-of-order execution, 3 levels of caching for instructions and data, branch prediction, and hyperthreading. That's the substance of the Hennesy and Patterson claim: during the 10-year up-clocking binge, 90% of performance gains still came from architecture.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean about cost per die. Can you elaborate?

<comment><USER3> So it wasn't clear to me initially which phase of cpu development you meant. I agree with your statement regarding cpu development in the 90s. Looking at the performance equation I gave earlier, the second portion has gone from several 10s of cycles/instruction in the 486 timeframe to 2-3 INSTRUCTIONS/cycle for the Pentium III.

My point was that your statement about 90% of the gains being from Instructions/clock (ie. architecture) was not always true. The Pentium 4 being a prime candidate, where the number of pipestages was dramatically scaled up (reducing instructions/clock) to increase frequency.

WRT cost/die: Cpus are created on circular silicon wafers. <http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2008/09/moore.ars/2> Every move to a lower process node, reduces the area for each cpu die. For a given cpu, this means that more of them can be added to each wafer, driving down the cost for each unit.

Ofcourse, as you mentioned, by keeping die size a constant , they get get more transistors/die, allowing them to cram more features on a chip. Lowering costs v/s adding features is a tradeoff that every cpu design team has to make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Given the number of people Intel employs, my guess is that Intel looks far enough ahead and teams have 2 year external deadlines. They've just staggered those deadlines so the public sees either a 'tick' or a 'tock' in a year.

</comment><comment><USER5> Extrapolating feature size reductions every two years:

2010: 32nm, 2012: 22nm, 2014: 16nm, 2016: 11nm, 2018: Nanoelectronics/magic

Eight years away from the end of CMOS? That's mind-boggling, especially since the ITRS roadmap puts 11nm feature size out in 2022.

<comment><USER2> Wait until you see what comes after.

Everyone thinks DNA is just genetic material, but researchers can already build rigid 3D structures with it, or weave it into flat sheets and then address the individual nucleotides like pixels.

The computers we use in 2025 will probably be self-assembled and might not be electronic, but they'll keep getting faster.

[http://metamodern.com/2009/05/22/a-third-revolution-in- dna-n...](http://metamodern.com/2009/05/22/a-third-revolution-in-dna- nanotechnology/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why those nm numbers? Hmmm... surface density (nm squared) roughly doubles every two years. Slower than Moore's Law (double every 18 months).

<comment><USER7> So I thought, but according to Wikipedia Moore wasn't that precise in his prediction. Initially in 1965 every year and later every two years. Without a citation they say he insists he never said 18 months.

Also it's a bit more complicated that just a doubling; again from Wikipedia, the original formulation was "about the density of transistors at which the cost per transistor is the lowest." ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law#Other_formulation...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law#Other_formulations_and_similar_laws))

Intel is of course not quite playing that game, with speed and power being somewhat more important than cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder why AMD doesn't use the 'tick-tock' model? It seems to work very well for Intel.

<comment><USER9> They kind of do, eg, 65nm was introduced with Athlon X2 before they came out with Phenom, then the Phenom was shrunk to 45nm, etc. I've always seen tick tock as purely a marketing thing, although the 1 year goals may drive engineering somewhat.

Interestingly, Intel is considering doing tick tock tock for 32nm.

<comment><USER7> Hmmm, I've never seen it as purely marketing, it seems to be very engineering oriented:

Tick: Take an existing, known working and understood design and shrink it for the new process, using that to work out the kinks in the latter.

Tock: Now that the new process is well understood, get a new design to work on it.

Intel is probably in a better position to do this due to their very strong emphasis on manufacturing and their ability to solidly plan their spending on new fab lines and processes.

<comment><USER9> I meant the whole 'tick tock' branding, so to speak - it seems to be marketing giving a name to something which engineering has been doing for sensible reasons for quite some time.

<comment><USER7> I'm sorry, but I got the impression from your saying "although the 1 year goals may drive engineering somewhat" that the marketing was driving the engineering and not the reverse.

I think that if you're doing something smart, something that shows how ... solid? reliable? your company is, something that's easily understood by most with an engineering background, _and something your competitor can't do_ , why not make some hay from it?

<comment><USER9> Ah, sorry, I meant that the only real change seemed to be that they drew a line in the sand and said we'll do a tick or a tock each year. But even then, it hasn't exactly happened that way (see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Tick-Tock>), and they must have had goals like that internally anyway.

I don't blame them for getting some marketing mileage out of it - just that I don't really see it as a very important change in terms of engineering. Although I'm just a casual observer of the industry so I may well be wrong about that.

<comment><USER7> Very interesting. Clearly, it takes them more time to do a tick than a tock, and that makes sense, the big unknown unknowns are in moving to a new process. E.g. look at the reported fun with TMSC's 40nm process (iffy vias and excessive variation in transistor construction), with ATI negotiating the mess in two steps and nVidia failing to.

Once you've done the tick, a new microarchitecture should be relatively easy, especially since you can simulate it ahead of time and towards the end do that in the light of what you've learn about the new process.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Intelligent machines: Making AI work in the real world - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34143171 <comment><USER2> This is not a very interesting piece. "Deep learning — have you heard of it?"

</comment><comment><USER3> The master plan to domination seems to be: put humans behind an API (a la mechanical turk), then get funding to grow your company while pushing everybody else out of business, and finally replace your human workers by AI.

</comment><comment><USER4> Oh good, I was hoping for a Stanford and Princeton graduate who presided over Google's hiring practices to combat the problems our society is confronting as a result of elitism: music curation.</comment>


GE's Walking Truck (1969) [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.educatedearth.net/video.php?id=5000 <comment><USER2> These two quotations taken from the different commentaries that were included in that short clip point sit well together, and, particularly the latter, hint at the kind of AI that were are only now beginning to see as the missing link in the success of this kind of machine.

 _" The strain of thinking about which leg to move next exhausted the operator"_

 _" The interfacing of this technology with a more advanced one will bring us that much closer to the realisation of a mechanical man."_

The mechanics have a surprising dexterity and finesse compared to compared to even modern machines that use hydraulics to allow humans to directly control the actuators (think JCB style backhoe digger).

<comment><USER3> _" The mechanics have a surprising dexterity and finesse compared to compared to even modern machines that use hydraulics to allow humans to directly control the actuators (think JCB style backhoe digger)."_

Backhoes with good haptic feedback have been built, but never became a product. That's surprising. There was one in the 1980s which was good enough that you could dig around a pipe by feel without breaking the pipe. Great for those jobs where you're working in a water and mud filled hole. Time to look at that problem again.

<comment><USER4> I guess the price was too high for what it offered vs just filing a damage report if ever a pipe got mangled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Apparently there are tree pruning machines with a similar design: [https://youtu.be/CpdZyJ0Y1jE?t=472](https://youtu.be/CpdZyJ0Y1jE?t=472)

<comment><USER6> The walking tree harvester, called PlusJack, was a development project by Timberjack (now part of John Deere) revealed in 1999.

The machine never entered production due to high manufacturing and maintenance costs, as well as the speed at which it could cover ground.

The prototype is now housed in The Museum of Lusto [1] in Finland (near bottom of page for pictures).

[1] [http://www.unusuallocomotion.com/pages/museums/museum-of- lus...](http://www.unusuallocomotion.com/pages/museums/museum-of-lusto-in- finland-forest-machinery.html)

<comment><USER3> Deere / Timberjack was beaten out by Ponsse.[1] Four wheels, two caterpillar tracks, and an articulated chassis. Probably lower ground pressure than the six-legged machine, because the heavy loads are on wide tracks.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daCCTuaiY0Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daCCTuaiY0Q)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just a heads up that a quick Google returns more videos, Wikipedia, etc. for this robot:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=ge+walking+truck](https://www.google.com/search?q=ge+walking+truck)

Wikipedia: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking_truck](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking_truck)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. There's more material out there, indeed, so I had to make a choice of what to post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't see this video for some reason, but I remember seeing this beast as a child in the memorable "Science & Vie hors série" "Robots" magazine in 1977, that I still have somewhere :) The article mentioned that only its designer could successfully tame the monster and make it walk (a little bit).

By the way in the very same magazine there was a huge article about SHRDLU and an interview with Terry Winograd, who's been my hero ever since :)

<comment><USER9> SHRDLU is my favorite computer science PhD thesis of all time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It looks like it's supported from above. Otherwise very interesting.

Somewhat related, another amazing Control Design solution from the annals of history. The B29 remote controlled turret [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nskFayhBcy0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nskFayhBcy0)

<comment><USER11> I think it's likely that's just as a precaution in case it's about to topple over so they avoid damaging the equipment. Under normal operation I suspect it provides no support.

<comment> a-priori On the Wikipedia page, it says "the hydraulic fluid and pressure was supplied through an off-board system" so I assume that those are hydraulic in that bundle.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking_truck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking_truck)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That voice in the last segment sounded like Rod Serling to my ears.

</comment><comment><USER13> Walking tanks were a Cold War era DoD thing. Something about forests in Europe. Or maybe the Soviets demo'ed one and now we had to close the walking tank gap.

</comment><comment><USER14> Needs Tauntaun version.</comment>